


The Paths We Choose To Travel

by thiswildheart



Series: Where you go, I go too [1]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fix-It, Force-Sensitive Din Djarin, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-20
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-16 16:27:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29578869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thiswildheart/pseuds/thiswildheart
Summary: On the deck of the imperial cruiser, Luke makes a different choice. When he leaves with Grogu, Din goes with them.It doesn't stop the war that's coming for them, but it changes enough.
Relationships: Din Djarin & Grogu | Baby Yoda, Din Djarin/Luke Skywalker
Series: Where you go, I go too [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2173170
Comments: 45
Kudos: 295





	The Paths We Choose To Travel

**Author's Note:**

> This ship has taken over my mind. I'm new here, in that after an interlude of self-doubt I've created an account purely to post this chaotic story. I don't know Star Wars beyond having seen all the films a couple of times, but the Mandalorian lives in my brain now and Din/Luke has got me through the last couple of months, so we are where we are. Please forgive any errors. (Particularly that this probably isn't how the Force works, but I'm going with it.)
> 
> This is sort of a love letter to the Din/Luke archive here, because I think them being together changes enough to rewrite part of the sequel trilogy canon and I refuse to accept any other outcome.
> 
> I've made this the first of a series, for which this would be a sort of combined intro and epilogue to a bunch of connected oneshots about their life together that have begun to devour my brain. So if you like it, watch this space <3

On the bridge of an imperial light cruiser, amid fallen bodies and the wreckage of an army of dark troopers, a Mandalorian chooses to break the creed he has devoted his life to. So does a Jedi, and the universe _shifts_.

It doesn't change everything. But it changes enough.

Removing the helmet breaks something in Din, or perhaps it reveals something that has already broken. By strict judgement of the Creed he has betrayed his armour before today anyway. It would have been unthinkable once, not even that long ago, but so much has changed since he found the child. He has begun to question not the way he has lived, but the way he wants to live now.

The Creed advocates the protection of foundlings above all, but protection no longer feels like enough.

He knows Grogu's name as his child; this much is true even if he has never spoken the vow aloud. Now he must let his son go to give him a better chance for a good life, for safety and training that Din cannot provide. There is nothing left that he can do but let Grogu know his face as his father.

The feeling of that tiny hand on his face is so many things at once. Touch, which he has not known since he was a child; love, overwhelming and absolute, the simplest and purest thing he's ever known, more than he thought he was capable or deserving of; and loss, because despite his promise he knows he might never have a moment like this again.

* * *

When the Mandalorian sets the child down and Luke picks him up, he senses how strongly the Force is twined in the tiny creature. He is a brilliant light in the Force, a power Luke never expected to find, but he has been hurt by so much darkness too.

Eyes both young and far too old gaze fixedly at Luke, and the child doesn't speak but he conveys thoughts to Luke anyway. They aren't formed as words but rather images and emotion, sensations that he throws at Luke's mind. There is a rush of memories, glimpses of a vast temple in a sprawling city, the magnificence of the Jedi Order before it fell like Luke has never seen before, a thousand stories Luke suddenly wants to hear, but that's not what Grogu finds most interesting in his own life. He shows Luke adventures instead - Stormtroopers and bounty hunters, a huge mudhorn and a vast, raging krayt dragon; huge many-legged monsters on an ice planet, bar brawls and assassins. And _rescue_ , again and again, a striding figure of strength and safety that gleams bright silver; gloved hands that reach for him offering protection, comfort, fun, the surety of food and care. A man who has given everything to protect a child, who never removes his helmet but has done so now for Grogu - another gift given at such a high cost.

And in Grogu's mind these memories and thoughts are bound tightly together in a core of warmth that blazes with clear bright light, helping shield him from the darkness, and it bursts into Luke's mind like a mental hug, chanting _lovelovelovefather_.

It reminds Luke of a hurt he has never quite shaken free of. A childhood without parents, the ache of missing people he'd never known, and then the conflict and struggle of learning about his father. Then that last terrible battle, and the lonely grief of a body burning at a tiny funeral.

He has set out to rebuild the Jedi, but that pyre was the way it all ended for the last of the Jedi who came before him. Would it have been that way if Anakin Skywalker had been _allowed_ to love, if he could have been given the guidance he really needed? Love is a part of Luke's life he would not sacrifice, and he has not fallen yet. Wasn't it love for Luke, that attachment, that had brought Anakin back to the light in the end? And wasn't it Luke's friends, his _sister_ , who had given him the strength to fight at all?

If he splits them up now, it will be out of fear - fear of what their bond might lead to. Fear is what destroyed his father, not the attachment itself. What he can see before him is selfless love, and it is love that makes this child feel strong. He will not take this away from him.

Luke changes his mind, looks up from the child, and says, "Come with us."

And the father -

Oh.

There is something strange at work in the Force around the Mandalorian, but all the same -

He is looking at the child and something is shining in him, too.

A small light, shadowed in a way that Luke has not seen before, but it burns with a tiny brilliance towards the child in Luke's arms.

The Mandalorian is Force-sensitive, and Luke doubts he even knows it.

The expression on the Mandalorian's face is utterly unguarded as he looks up at Luke, the openness of a man who has never needed to conceal anything on his face. Grief, misery, loss - his eyes are like wells into a deep pain. But it makes the flash of hope an even more brilliant thing - a hope he barely seems to dare to feel.

"I thought I had to leave him. That it was too dangerous."

Luke has been so busy trying to learn about a past almost lost to him that he is only now realising what _he_ believes, outside of what the Jedi always used to stand for.

"I want to build something new," he says, feeling the truth of it as he speaks. "He needs you."

It's a sentiment he knows Master Yoda wouldn't approve of but Grogu, so alike and so different, coos happily in his arms. He hooks one clawed hand into Luke's robes and reaches back towards his father with the other.

And when Luke leaves with the child, the Mandalorian goes with him.

* * *

It's a strange life that they build together, the Mandalorian, the Jedi and the child with a foot in each world. It takes a long time for Din to feel at ease in the temple that Luke has begun to make his own; weeks for them to find their rhythm, months for the two men to begin to know each other.

But time changes all things. Wariness becomes familiarity, strangers learn to trust and become friends. Time living in peace and fighting together on adventures creates a shared life full of danger, risk and thrill, and the steady growth of a comfort that becomes _home_.

It's a long story - a lifetime of stories - to relate how the two of them fall in love.

But because they fall in love, Din _stays_.

The temple grows, fills with padawans, a school full of students - children that they raise together, he and Din, while Luke teaches them to master their abilities. It's not the life he'd have dreamed of as a kid but it feels right, being here with his family, not just rebuilding but building something new together.

Years go by. Leia senses a threat of darkness to her child and sends Ben to Luke. It's a step towards a greater threat, though none of them could know it, but things are different from how they might have been.

Because Din stayed years before, Luke is not alone the night he feels a terrible darkness surrounding Ben in the Force. He senses a growing power that _scares_ him like nothing has in years, and it's crept insidiously into this home that ought to have been safe. His first instinct is to act, to do what he must to defend, to protect.

But he isn't alone. Din is beside him when he feels it, there to listen and calm him, to hold his hand and talk him through the panic.

He doesn't go to where Ben lies sleeping, doesn't raise his saber against a boy, because Din helps bring him back to his senses in time.

It's Grogu who sees what the others missed, that there is an obsession with the idea of Vader lurking in Ben's heart. It's a poisonous idea, planted by a greater power, and it's an idealisation that makes Grogu recoil at first. But he's older now, braver than he used to be, raised in safety and love by two men who have given him so much, and it gives him the confidence to reach out.

Because although this is his family, it is not the first home he ever knew. There was another, oh, seventy years or more ago, before darkness fell. Ben is part of a greater story, and Grogu remembers how it started.

So he goes to Ben, this boy who is still light but a kind of light that troubles Grogu, for it is the light of a fire beginning to burn too bright. And he tells his cousin about a boy called Anakin Skywalker.

Ben knows the name, of course he does, but these stories are new to him, for no one but Grogu has survived to tell them. Grogu closes his eyes and shares memories through the Force of a bright life that blazed with power; a bold and talented boy, a daring young man who fell in love.

The dark thing inside Ben's mind is frightening to look at, sending twisting tendrils out that fill his thoughts with stories of Darth Vader like he is something to idolise. Grogu remembers fire and the screams of children, the day he was left in darkness until light reflected off beskar, and he thinks _not again_. So he pushes Vader aside and shows Ben the day Anakin caught twenty frogs for Grogu, more than even he could eat. He shows the day they snuck out of the temple to enter a pod race, when Anakin drove so fast that the world was a blur and Grogu laughed and laughed. He tells about the day they spent hiding from Master Yoda, earning the awe of the other padawans when they made the mysterious old Master lose his patience.

And when his stories are told, he goes to find his fathers. Because Ben needs to understand that Vader's was never a story of triumph but of tragedy; that it began from love and ended in regret, and the darkness had not been worth it in the end. Grogu still feels too young, sometimes, to know all that he does - this is part of the grief that haunts his buir's eyes at times - but he has learned that light is a choice, a battle fought one life at a time.

So he tells Ben how Vader's story began and he gets Luke to tell him how it ended, so that Ben might know how little Anakin would want his grandchild to follow in his footsteps.

* * *

Once again, it doesn't change everything, but it does just enough, in the end.

Because people have choices and someone raised in safety and love and given all the chances those around them can provide can still make the wrong decision. Snoke still calls and Ben still listens, and he leaves. But he doesn't go as a teenager betrayed by his uncle, destroying the fledgling Jedi temple and murdering children in a moment of terror and fury. He goes as a young man, a few years later, with more training under his belt and making more of a conscious choice towards darkness. But he also goes with a kernel of doubt within him that Snoke has not been able to touch.

Doubt about the darkness, about the path his new Master promises him is right. His family has been keeping him from his true potential, hidden in their shadows; none of them know real power, the kind that's within his grasp. But...

But.

But he remembers a childhood of adventures real and imaginary, clambering around the Falcon with his father until he knew its every secret, watching from his mother's lap as she changed the world with her arms holding him close. He remembers the delight of realising he could be like his uncle, back before he began to resent the training; the thrill of the first time he held a lightsaber and the pride in Luke's face when he mastered a new skill. He remembers waking from a nightmare to a gloved hand on his forehead and the silver shine of moonlight on beskar, husky lullabies murmured in unknown languages that make him think of a galaxy of unexplored planets. And a tiny green hand, wide dark eyes, a silent connection in the Force, a lifetime told in bittersweet memories.

Under the rage and bitterness of Kylo Ren, who rips himself away from his past with every step, there is a deeply buried kernel of memory that Ben Solo once loved and was loved by his family.

It doesn't stop him, until it does.

Life is a series of choices, and sometimes it's too late to go back.

Sometimes you can stop in time.

Kylo Ren stands on a bridge inside Starkiller in front of his father and finds he does have the strength for this last choice after all.

He flings the lightsaber into the depths below, and watches it fall.

"Dad," Ben says, only to find words cloying in his throat, clogged with horror and guilt and regret.

Han Solo touches his son's cheek. "I know, kid," he says, grieving and grateful and filled with a love that never ends. "I know."

And far across the galaxy, in a garden flooded with soft golden light, a man as aged now as 'Old Ben' was when his adventures began sits and smiles.

"Luke?"

He opens his eyes, pulling his awareness back from the Force, and looks up at the Mandalorian with a lighter heart than he has known in years. Din has changed, as they both have, since they first saw each other on that imperial cruiser - though with age Luke has come to envy the helmet his partner still wears sometimes, on days when vanity inclines him to hide his own greying hair. Din wears less armour now than he did as a young man, parts of his beskar melted down to fashion the armour their foundling now wears, but he is as radiant in the morning sunlight as he ever was.

"I felt something," Din continues, helmet tilted curiously. He is still cautious about his connection to the Force, even now. Luke has long since decided this is not his failing as a teacher - he has trained many students successfully, after all - but rather a sign that no one can teach a stubborn Mandalorian anything he does not want to know.

"Yes," Luke says, because he feels the same thing; the Force is singing with it. "Our nephew is coming home."

He can sense Din's smile under the helmet. "I guess we've got work to do."

They made their choices long ago, Luke and Din. It didn't give them a life without trouble. Snoke remains, his ambition a dark cloud in the Force, and there is something darker still beyond him that is veiled from Luke's sight. But it changed enough that the laughter of children remains in the last Jedi temple, that Luke Skywalker and Din Djarin will never be alone. There is still a war to be fought, but there is also a family to come home to when they are done.

There is a part of Luke that feels ancient enough to wish the universe would simply leave them to finish growing old here, hand in hand. But Luke was born with a heart full of stars and Din has flown among them almost as much as he's lived on solid ground; they've chosen a life of risk and adventure together.

Besides, they have built such a beautiful future, one where a new sort of Jedi have begun to spread across the galaxy and even now are rallying to Leia's call to fight. They have something to fight to gain and something infinitely worth defending, this generation of children they're training and raising as part of a huge, strange family that combines the best of the Jedi code with the best of the Mandalorian creed.

Din offers a hand. Luke is not so old yet that he needs the help to stand but he takes it anyway, just for the feel of Din's fingers against his. It's still a wonder after all these years.

"Forward, then," Luke says with a smile. "Together."


End file.
